Big Thunder, coming close to the scout, suddenly swung the pick high in air. The scout, intent on probing whatever mystery lay at the bottom of the Forty Thieves shaft, seemed unconscious of everything that was going forward at the surface.
“Pa-e-has-ka!” screamed the Indian girl, as she flung the stone.
That wild cry of Wah-coo-tah’s broke the thrall of silence that had hovered over the tragic scene. The scout looked upward, saw the Ponca’s gleaming eyes and the raised pick, and saw the stone strike the Ponca’s uplifted arm.
The pick fell, but was deflected by the stone, and its point bit murderously into the stout planks of the platform.
Another instant and the scout had come to hand-grips with his red foe. Cody had had no time to draw knife or revolver, but the Ponca had succeeded in getting his own blade half-out of its scabbard before the white man closed with him.
A look into Big Thunder’s eyes convinced the scout that he would fight to the death, that he had come there either to kill or be killed.
The struggle was, at the beginning, for the possession of the Ponca’s half-drawn knife.
The oiled body of the savage slipped and wriggled in the scout’s hands, now pressing him closer, now dragging away, and every instant the redskin’s hand plucked steadily and resolutely at the knife.
Wah-coo-tah, excited and apprehensive, came to the top of the ore-dump, dodging this way and that to keep out of the way of the combatants, and seeking to be of service to Pa-e-has-ka.
With a magnificent effort, in which his greased arm and head slipped through the scout’s gripping fingers, Big Thunder managed to get the knife from its sheath.